Recipe from the Past for the Future: Public Health Intervention Represent a Process for Century

In the poor Bosnia, in the early 20th century endemic syphilis was widespread. Combating this disease entailed the necessity of etiology research, diagnosis and clinical nature of the disease, as well as the insight into the epidemiological image of this unresolved health problem. Thanks to the visionary, the enthusiasm and persistence of the expert team of doctors from that time in Croatia, School of Public Health and the Rockefeller Foundation as financial support, conditions were created to conduct population monitoring and research called “survey”. The team of experts from Croatia and Bosnia led by Dr. Ante Vuletic began this important public health intervention in Central Bosnia underneath the mountain Vlasic 1934. In villages of mountain Vlasic people were living in very difficult social and unsanitary conditions. “Interviewers” worked in makeshift clinics in the rural schools Opare, Rankovici, Vitovlje Mehorica, Turbe, Bila and Gornji Vakuf. A hundred years later, a team of university professors from the School of Public Health “Andrija Stampar” led by Professor Silvije Viletic followed the footsteps of century “survey” on Vlasic in the summer of 2014. They determined that with the integrated approach to population monitoring and testing endemic syphilis in Bosnia was successfully suppressed.